Tag: response flexibilty

In the previous post, I discussed the challenges posed by the digital age and shared Sky Jarrett’s perspective on how mindfulness can enable a leader to thrive in the new world of work. Rich Fernandez, in his presentation during the Mindful Leadership Online Conference, provided a complementary perspective on what leaders need to do to cultivate “future-ready” leadership capacity. Rich was formerly Director of Executive Education at Google, a Master Teacher for SIYLI and founder of Wisdom Labs .

Rich described future-ready leadership as “having the mental and emotional clarity and balance to meet all of life’s challenges, situations and people that you might encounter”. His presentation focused on how to develop these leadership characteristics.

Developing mental and emotional clarity and balance

Rich identified the following ways to develop these core leadership characteristics for the digital age:

Mindful listening – being present enough to focus on what the other person is saying and sufficiently open to understand their message and be influenced by it so that common ground can be developed. Rich suggested that the American Senator John McCain was an exemplar of mindful listening because he sought “constructive bipartisan dialogue” and enabled continual conversation to reach that elusive middle ground. Mindful listening requires a preparedness to avoid reacting mindlessly, prematurely offering a solution or pursuing an agenda.

Response flexibility – to engage in mindful listening you also need to have what Rich calls “response flexibility”- which is the agility to be able to respond appropriately and in respectful way to the other person’s communication. I have discussed a way to develop response ability in an earlier post.

Values alignment – ensuring that your behaviour actually reflects your personal values. Rich mentioned that Marc Benioff – founder, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce – is an exemplar of values alignment and puts service to the community ahead of profit. For example, he has built meditation rooms on every floor in the new, towering Salesforce building. His organisation practises business consciously so that “stakeholder management” is top of mind and is discussed as often as shareholder management – placing the needs of consumers on a least an equal footing with the wants and needs of shareholders. Rich shared a series of questions that can help a leader check their values alignment – “What are your values?”, “Why are they important to you?”, “To what extent are your words and actions aligned with your values?” [poetic licence used here].

Personal vision – this flows naturally from a consideration of values alignment. So, this is about a vision for oneself as a leader, not the organisational vision (although it is ideal that there is a strong alignment between the two). Rich poses some relevant questions from the Search Inside Yourself Program to help clarify a personal vision, “What is your vision for yourself and your life?”, “What will your legacy be – your personal contribution to the world?”, “If your life exceeded your wildest expectations, what would it look like – what is happening and what are you contributing? [some poetic licence here too]. I previously discussed Goldie Hawn as an exemplar of someone who is committed to a personal vision and has aligned her words and actions in pursuit of this vision.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop the desired leadership characteristics to meet the challenges of the digital age. With persistent mindfulness practice, we can develop mental and emotional clarity, achieve balance in our life, progressively expand our response flexibility, and build alignment between our words and actions and our values/personal vision.